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Warcolours Paints Review Part 1

Currently painters are really spoilt for choice when it comes to
buying paints. There are more companies than ever producing paint
ranges aimed at gamers and painters than possibly ever before.
Something that they all share in common is their fairly high price
though (we'll look at this in more detail later) A new company called
Warcolours is set to change that though, promising quality at a more
reasonable price. I've had my eye on these for a while but decided to
finally pick them up and try them out. Currently I use a mix of
mostly GW paints (because I owned them first) and an ever increasing
supply of P3, Vallejo, Reaper and Scale 75 paints.

While this will be mostly a Warcolour focussed review I will compare
them to the other paint brands I have. I might do a full paint
comparison article in the future.

Packaging

Warcolours come in a dropper bottle similar to Vallejo/Reaper/Scale 75. The
main difference is that Warcolours include a child safety cap, might
be useful if you have kids that can reach your hobby area! The
bottles are clear with a transparent label with black writing on it.
While this is fine on the lighter paints it means it's basically
unreadable on dark paints. They could do with a white label for the
darker paints! Another thing to note is that the Warcolours pots are
made from a much stiffer plastic than other dropper bottles, I found
that I had to squeeze them fairly hard (sometimes with both hands) to
get the paint out onto the palette. I didn't have any problems with
excess paint spurting out but it's something to note.

Price

Now here is the real selling point, and the table below shows you
why. (prices taken from websites I buy from. Reviews normally use RRP
but I thought it far better to use what prices I actually buy the
paints for. Mostly these prices are from Element Games but the Reaper
prices are from Miniature Heroes and the Warcolours from their own
site (converted from Euros).

Brand

Price

Size

Price per 100ml

Vallejo Model Colour

£2.03

17ml

£11.94

Games Workshop

£1.99

12ml

£16.58

Reaper Master Series

£2.58

15ml

£17.20

Scale 75

£2.48

17ml

£14.59

P3

£2.25

15ml

£15.00

Warcolours

£1.24

15ml

£8.27

Well they certainly win on price! By a considerable margin too. A
disclaimer here, Reaper paints are a little harder to find in the UK
(I only know of one online retailer that stocks them) so that might
explain the slightly higher price. GW's higher price is explained by
it being GW ;) Also worth noting is that Warcolours offer 250ml
bottles if you know you'll need a lot of one colour. These come in at
£10.80 for the 250ml so are excellent value!

Range

No snazzy names here, Warcolours are separated into colours then a
number, the higher the number the darker the colour.

I only have the core range and fluorescent range to test today but
Warcolours also do a number of other ranges:

Transparent Paints – Designed for 'shading, glazing and colour
grading'

Glaze Paints - These seem to be the same as the above range so I'm
not sure why they've separated them.

Features

Warcolours boast a range of features that they think help them stand
out in the market, these are:

colours do not separate

perfect consistency

smooth paint, no lumping

brush and airbrush compatible

child-proof cap

dropper bottles minimise contamination and drying out risk

intermixable with other brands

Now some of this is to be expected but there are a few things worth
talking about. First of all, colours do not separate. Now I'm sure
anyone that owns dropper bottle from companies like Vallejo or Scale
75 knows that despite the advantages that dropper bottles bring, they
need some serious shaking before use. I tested this out by leaving my
Warcolours on my desk for a week, then opened them and put some paint
on my palette with no shaking. To my amazement the claim is correct,
no separation at all! They also claim 'perfect consistency' Now I'm
not sure exactly what is meant by that, as your target paint
consistency will be different depending on what you are doing with
it. I assume they mean for base coating you should use it undiluted
but this will require some experimenting.

Join me next week as I put
the paints through their paces! Let me know in the comments if you've tried out these paints or any thoughts you have about the other paint ranges out there.

11 comments:

I was a beta tester over on CMON. They are a nice range of paint for the price. They behave a bit differently from other brands but once you get used to them they are great. They mix well with other brands and take clear coats well too. I used them to paint up some start wars rebels mini for the little one. They are very durable too :)

Thanks for the comment! Durability is something I never really consider, I'm more a painter than a gamer so my stuff mostly goes on a display shelf. it's definitely important though if they're aiming at the gamers.

I was part of the beta testing for this range and I quite liked them back then and have used them since then, I haven't bought any since then but I'm going to try to pick up some, so it's going to be very interesting to read what your opinion will be on them.

I really like that they don't seperate, I have some of the beta package that I haven't really used much since then (it's quite some time ago by now) and they are just as good out of the bottle as they were then.

They mix quite well with the other brands available, or at least the ones I had at home when I tried.

I bought the whole nine yards deal and the metallic paints from the Warcolours range. Excellent value at around €150 for 112 bottles of paint. However, I found the paints very difficult to use. I am an intermediate painter that uses different techniques, but I feel these paints are for the more advanced painter that uses primarily the blending technique. A lot of the metallic paints are totally rubbish, but the gold, pewter and the excellent copper were very good. I sent the paints that I didn’t use back and got a full refund. Warcolours have an excellent customer service. These paints didn’t work for me but I’m sure there are perfectly fine for others.

These paints are not good for beginners at all. You cannot even base coat with them! Fair play to you if you find they work for you, but don't recommend them to beginner painters as they will waste their hobby funds. Warcolours are simply inferior to other ranges out there. They are just, well, cheap.